


Come Attrition

by twelvenervouscats (crazybeagle)



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Psychological Trauma, What is a backstory, Who even knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 03:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14127009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazybeagle/pseuds/twelvenervouscats
Summary: He’s gone still, very very still, and his eyes are fixed on the surface of the water.Your fingers go just as still, knotted up in his hair. Anxiety thrums in your chest. “Natsume…”When he finally, finally looks up at you, jaw working soundlessly, something in his eyes is off.But off in an all too familiar way."Get out of the water."





	Come Attrition

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in four years, and naturally I vomit out ten thousand words of self-indulgent angst with zero proper backstory. Strap in, kids.
> 
> (The second chapter will tell you what’s actually going on, so bear with me—information’s being intentionally withheld here!)

You find him in the garden.

You find him in the garden, and it nearly stops your heart. He's a rumpled heap in the withering late autumn grass, curled loosely on his side, pale fingers inches from an overturned basket of damp-looking laundry. In the space of a breath you've gone down hard on your knees beside him, one hand lighting on the side of his face and the other winding itself into his hair. You call his name. Tap his cheek, urgently.

No response. He's out cold.

Then, you think you hear a sniffle.

Somewhere off to your left. Decidedly _not_ Natsume.

You sincerely hope it's whichever of Natsume's ayakashi friends whose turn it was to be looking after the house. You don't recall who, it changes all the time and it's not as though you can tell by sight.

It’s a great time for Ponta to have run off to god-knows-where.

For now your focus shifts back to Natsume. You doubt anything truly dangerous could slip past Ponta's wards but you'll have to take your chances anyways because you're more worried about the uneven blotches of color high on Natsume's cheeks. The briefest touch of your fingers to his forehead leaves no doubt that there's a fever, and it's high.

And there's that sniffle again. Closer, now, right by your shoulder.

The sound follows you into the house.

Carrying Natsume is always an unnerving experience. It's a given that he's too light, and even the Fujiwaras' best efforts--and your own efforts, now--had never managed to change that. But it's when he's dead weight in your arms like this, head rolling back, lips parted, arms and legs hanging freely. It's completely terrifying.

It's too similar to when you found him, back then.

You push it hastily from your mind before it can make your stomach turn too badly and focus on making the trip from garden to bedroom as short as humanly possible. It's awkward to maneuver him but again he's light, and you don't think he's been injured anywhere although you plan to investigate further on that front as soon as possible.

You lay him gently on the floor while you're fetching the futon and a clean pair of sweats. He doesn't stir and his skin looks eggshell-white and just as fragile against the tatami. His face is completely vacant. Corpselike, you think fleetingly, then shake yourself and reach for him.

You'd hoped the process of getting him into a change of clothes would rouse him even a little. No such luck but he does shiver at the cool air on exposed skin when you lift his shirt. And keeps shivering.

You frown. Fever chills, check.

You don't spot anything abnormal under the shirt. Well, admittedly, you can hardly call the terrible latticework of scars across his entire back and chest and torso, long and deep and puckered, _normal._ But not exactly new. Of course, if there were a curse mark or somesuch then you yourself most likely wouldn’t know it. Which brings you squarely back to _just where the hell is Ponta._ Because when it comes to the vast majority of things that can (and do) hurt Natsume, you’re quite literally blind and effectively useless.

You try not to look too long before tugging the fresh sweatshirt over his head. Natsume’s conscious about the scars even on the best of days, particularly because the they don’t stop where clothing can hide them. From his fingertips to his elbows, and ringing his wrists, his neck. His _face_. Long slashes across his cheeks, one across his forehead even, the flesh taut and pink and ropey and very, very conspicuous against pale skin.

Natsume almost never meets people’s eyes, now, because of that. In public places he’s literally never without a flu mask, the result of a now-debilitated immune system, and that does usually conceal the worst of the visible ones on his face. But he finds it difficult to maintain eye contact for much time at all even with the Fujiwaras, with Taki, with Natori, with Nishimura and Kitamoto. With you yourself, sometimes, and that makes your chest ache.

He’d explained that he doesn’t want to watch people get uncomfortable, or sad, (or murderously angry on his behalf, in Ponta’s case, though out of everyone he does the best job of maintaining a placid expression). His reasoning, apparently, is that if he’s not looking at anyone in the first place then they won’t feel obligated to look back.

 _That’s not how it works,_ you want to shout, sometimes. _Just let yourself be cared about, for once._

It’s never going to be that easy for him, you know. But you’ll do everything in your power to make it even the tiniest bit easier, for as long as it takes.

As you could’ve guessed, changing him into his sweatpants reveals no outward sign of injury either, save for the old ones. Surgical scars, marking both his ankles and part way up one of his legs. They’re certainly not shallow but short and evenly spaced and already fading to pink in places. It’s a little easier to stomach the sight of these, remnants of wounds that were created with the intent to heal.

Not simply to make him _bleed_.

You ignore the tremor in your hands as you tuck the futon cover tight around his shoulders.

Now you’re torn between going to locate wet towels and fever medicine, or staying put and trying to rouse him. He doesn’t seem to be in any immediate danger so you’d nearly decided on the former but the there’s still the unknown sniffling youkai to contend with. The decision is made for you soon enough however when the sniffles resolve into a shuddering little sob, and Natsume’s eyelids flutter. Your hand flies up to cup his cheek. “Natsume.”

Dull eyes peek open. He’s not looking at you, but over your shoulder. “Mugi…?” His voice is barely a wisp.

“What?” You blink and turn around but of course you see nothing. Regardless, his eyes are sliding into focus and he seems to be listening for something. Your hand’s still cupping his cheek, thumb circling absently across overwarmed skin. 

Another sound, a small hiccuping thing, and you think with a desperate touch of relief that whether you can see it or not, at least there’s _actually something there_ that’s captured Natsume’s attention this time and that he isn’t talking into empty air. Small mercies.  

After a moment Natsume gives a small sheepish grin. His eyes fall closed. “Sorry I frightened you. Thank you, Mugi.” 

“Natsume,” you repeat. You lean fully into his line of vision. He starts a bit but his eyes refocus on your face. You don’t ask him if he’s alright. You don’t bother. Instead you ask,  “What happened?” 

His expression shifts from blearily surprised to happy to see you to sheepish once more. “Hi,” he says, with a wan smile.

“Hey. _What happened_?” you repeat, and his smile slips. 

“I...um. Collapsed, I think.” 

“Yes, I got that,” you deadpan, and his expression morphs into one of outright guilt. And you don’t particularly want to make him feel worse on top of being clearly unwell but you have the sinking feeling that you do know what happened here. “Natsume…” 

But he’s spared, for the moment, from answering when for the umpteenth time there’s a sniffle from over your shoulder. You turn a little and jab a thumb in the direction of the sound. “Who’s…” 

Natsume blinks. “You can hear?” He looks equal parts startled and relieved by this. Though you could’ve told him already that he wasn’t hallucinating it because Natsume has yet to hallucinate any creature of the benign variety. You nod, slowly. 

“Oh,” he says, and tries for a smile. It falls a little flat. “Mugi lives in the garden. In the tall grasses.” 

You turn around and squint at the spot Natsume’s looking. No luck. Not even the slightest haze or shimmer of the air, which is bizarre considering you can hear it. But what, or _who_ , you’re able to sense can be arbitrary. “Is it a strong spirit?” 

“Not really, no--” he tries to prop himself up on a shaking elbow but doesn’t get very far before you’re pressing him back down with a hand to his chest. He doesn’t fight you, falls back easily. “Not strong enough to have been able to pass through Sensei’s wards. He was one of the ones that lived here already.” 

You remain silent on that point; you have….mixed feelings, about the fact that there’s a small collection of household and garden spirits living here, will live here indefinitely because they’re all too weak to pass back through the barrier around the property and leave even if they wished. And Natsume would never depose them anyhow. You doubt they’d actually try to hurt him, and if things were different you might find the whole idea kind of charming. As it stands though you can’t say you’re fond of leaving him here all day with things you can’t see.

“Where is Ponta?” you ask. 

“Patrolling.” 

“For how long?” 

He smiles ruefully at that. “I don’t know. What time is it now?” 

“Past four.” 

“...oh?” He looks startled, disoriented. “Maybe three hours, then, if he’s not back yet.” He turns his head towards the wall with the window behind him, where the sky’s already growing dark. Moreso than usual as it’s threatening rain. 

Well, damn it. “Were you outside that whole time?”

His eyes are closed now. “Mostly, yeah.” He sounds resigned, and he knows what you already knew, that he’s going to be laid up for days because of it. His voice is already raspy and he’s sniffling a bit, and mostly it’s just luck that’s keeping him from coughing up a lung right now, between being still in the midst of convalescence from a particularly nasty cold-turned-chest-infection, and lying in a faceful of outdoor allergens for three hours. You make a note to grab his inhaler, and you’re thinking you should run him a bath before he can fall asleep again.

“Why were you in the garden?”

“Hm?” His forehead scrunches up, as though trying to recall. “Oh. Mugi was going to help me hang some laundry.” His eyes widen suddenly. “Oh, the laundry!” His head whips around towards the window again. “Ah! It looks like rain, we need to--”

You’re about to cut him off right there because you couldn’t give a damn about wet laundry at the moment, but he’s trailed off on his own, apparently listening to Mugi again, eyes focusing behind you. “Oh.” He smiles, small and relieved. “Thank you. We’ll bring you some barley tea later.” To you, he adds, “Mugi will take care of the laundry.”

You glance over your shoulder. “Thanks,” you say, awkwardly, to empty air.

“He says you’re welcome and he’s sorry...You don’t have to be sorry, Mugi, I shouldn’t have put you in that situation.” He looks vastly ashamed of himself now, moreso when he catches your eye and realizes what he’d just said.

“What situation?” But you think you know.

He looks away. “I, um.”

“Um?” you prompt.

“I returned a name.”

You really, really hate to have been proven right. “When?” you ask, helplessly.

“Last night. It was after you’d gone to sleep, he came to the window. Sensei told him to go away, but...I heard him out.”

Dread drops into your stomach like a chunk of ice. “It’s too soon to be doing that. You were just sick....”

“I know...”

“ _Really_ sick…”

“I know.” His eyes are closed. The sigh he lets out is weak and wheezy.

Your hands have drifted up to the sides of his face of their own accord, pressing lightly, chin to temple. Like you could hold him together, should he fracture into a million pieces and start to vanish.

“I’m sorry.”

You can’t quite tell him it’s okay, because really it’s not okay, but your thumbs trace in careful dips beneath his eyes. “What made you think it couldn’t wait until you were better?”

“The stars.”

You blink, nonplussed. “The what?”

“Um.” He pauses as if mustering the energy to furnish a proper explanation. “Y’know how I told you that sometimes the constellations look different, for me?”

You nod. You still aren’t sure how to feel about that, whether you find the idea of celestial bodies of a purely spiritual light romantic, or the notion of ayakashi UFOs disturbing. But since he told you about it you’ve wanted to see them for yourself to make up your mind.

And he tells you the story. He starts to sag about halfway through, looking profoundly exhausted and, unfortunately, starting to cough a bit between words. He loses track of what he’s saying at least once, squinting in drowsy consternation as he tries to remember how to order his words into a cohesive thought. But you get the gist of it. A spirit from a tribe of night wanderers, whose route of travel is a pathway that only opens up once every twenty-two-ish years, under a very specific alignment of stars. At least within Yatsuhara, apparently. But after Reiko had taken the spirit’s name, he’d been literally unable to cross the gateway, and his tribe had left him behind. He’d weakened, cut off from the path and the tribe, and spent most of those years sleeping in a cave in the forest, but the re-opening of the path had roused him, twice now since then. The first time he’d awakened, twenty-two years ago, the spirit’s searching had been fruitless, Reiko being long dead by then. But this time around he’d managed to locate Natsume after some frantic searching and pleading with other ayakashi for information, with just days left until the chance was once again lost.

“So if he forced his way through Ponta’s wards it means he was pretty powerful, wasn’t he? Even if he was already weakened?”

Natsume nods, eyes half-lidded. He keeps nodding off, only to jolt himself back into awareness with a cough or two. Apprehension churns thick in your stomach. This is typically how it was if a spirit was strong enough to come here of its own accord; the higher class of being it was the more it took out of Natsume to return the name. Fortunately that wasn’t nearly as often as it could have been, as often as Natsume said it’d been while he’d still lived in the Fujiwaras’ house. The wards were much stronger here, and word hadn’t gotten well and truly around that Natsume lived in the center of town where spirits of the forests and valleys were wary to venture. It still happened too often for your liking. The first time he’d tried to return a name, after he...well, _after_ , he was unconscious for over 24 hours afterwards, and Ponta had just barely managed to talk you out of calling an ambulance. He’d been asleep, Ponta knew this because he could see his dreams. He didn’t tell you what Natsume was dreaming of, he never does and you never ask. Could’ve fooled you, though; he certainly didn’t _look_ like he was dreaming, he’d looked literally lifeless, skin bone-white and body so very still. When he’d finally, finally woken he’d been weak and pale and feverish for an entire week afterwards, and you and Ponta had had to talk him into agreeing to some ground rules about how often and under what circumstances he could return names without doing himself irreversible damage.

Well. Any more damage than had already been done.

You know he wants to thin out the Book of Friends as much and as quickly as he dares, and you know why. He’d _felt_ those ayakashi die, a year and a half ago, felt it rip into the fibers of his own being. You know he blames himself, however irrationally, but you also know he knows he’s safe now, the Book is safe, the names are safe. So many beings, human and ayakashi alike, are making absolutely sure of that. He knows this, at least intellectually. But what he still apparently can’t seem to grasp is that he’ll do no one any favors by pushing himself, making himself so ill that he can’t return names even if he wants to.

“It couldn’t have really done him any harm to wait, could it?” you ask. You’re brushing back his hair with your fingers, and if Natsume had the energy you know he’d try to swat your hand away for making his bangs stick up in all kinds of weird angles. As it stands he just shutters his eyes and turns his head slightly towards your hand. “Didn’t Ponta say that decades and decades are nothing to an ayakashi? I mean, they all still show up here expecting to find Reiko.”

Natsume peeks one eye open. “I couldn’t make him wait,” he mutters.

“Why _not_?” you blurt, a desperate bite to your voice. “He could’ve just taken another nap, it wouldn’t have hurt him, and now you’ve gone and hurt yourself. It’s not...it’s not worth that.” Your fingers have stopped combing back his hair, and you vaguely register that they’re trembling.

“Tanuma.” Both eyes are open now, and he looks...devastated, and so very tired. “I won’t--” his voice falters then, and his lips press together in a thin line, but the words hang in the air regardless, heavy and awful.

_I won’t be here in 22 years._

And damn it, not _this_ , not now. In general Natsume steers carefully clear of this subject with you, though you’ve got the sinking feeling it’s more for your sake than his own. It’d started with the appearance of a genuinely concerned yet spectacularly tactless spirit, an ethereal little thing with flowers woven through its hair by Natsume’s account. It had come for their name a few months ago. It had taken one look at Natsume and declared he _hadn’t had much life left_ in him. The spirit was an empathic type, according to Ponta after the fact, who seemed to be attuned in some way to vitality of other living beings. And at that, Natsume had gone quiet for a moment, just a moment, before carrying on with the exchange, looking subdued but nowhere near as jarred or panicked as you felt to hear it. Ponta’s claws digging into your leg were the only thing that kept you from seizing the spirit by its invisible shoulders and demanding just what the hell it meant by waltzing in here and saying something like that, but it was a near thing. And afterwards Natsume had had nothing to say. He’d just looked...resigned. You remember holding him where you’d caught him, after he’d slumped over from the exertion of returning the name, icy dread pooling in your gut while his forehead bumped against your collarbone. Ponta was saying not to take much stock in the words, that an ayakashi’s concept of both time and living energy were radically different than that of a human’s, but his own voice had sounded less sardonic than usual as he’d said it, and he’d hovered even closer than usual beside Natsume the rest of the night. You yourself had spent that night in a haze of sleepless nausea, squeezing Natsume’s limp hand a bit too hard and vowing a thousand times over to no one but your own frantic brain and a blank ceiling that _it won’t happen, I won’t let it._

“I’m sorry,” Natsume says, now. His voice is a bare rasp. “‘M sorry--” He’s cut off by a cough. And another, and another. He angles his face towards the pillow, eyes watering, but he can’t seem to stop himself, sucking in a few shuddering gasps between each cough.

“Hey.” You lean in, voice gentle as it can be while making sure he can can hear you over his coughing. “Hey, shhh…” One of your hands lights on his shoulder, the other on his chest. You begin rubbing up and down the length of his sternum. You’ve seen him do this to himself, sometimes, when he’s dealing with the respiratory distress stuff, though doing it as lightly as you are you’re not really sure it’s doing anything. At any rate it’s calmed down a bit, you think, the gap between coughs getting longer. You can _feel_ the wheezing under your thumb, but it’s a dry rattling, which isn’t great but it’s not the telltale deep bubbling that would indicate (and _has_ indicated, in the not so distant past,) something much more dire.

At some point he’s gotten his face out of the pillow and he’s watching you, now. His eyes are still wet and pained and he seems to be keeping his breaths shallow and careful, but he’s relaxed somewhat. “Any better?” you ask him.

His head bobs very slightly.

“Good.” You bend over him, slowly, and kiss the corner of his mouth.

But the tenuous calm doesn’t last, because seconds later he makes a slight choking sound and then in the span of a second he’s hacking into the hand he’s slapped hastily over his mouth, eyes screwing shut.

It passes fairly quickly, though, and he’s glancing up at you afterwards. “Don’t kiss me right now,” he manages breathlessly. “I’ll cough in your face…”

“On purpose?” you can’t resist asking.

You’d hoped that’d elicit an eye roll or something but it falls flat.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, instead.

“Don’t. Just get better, okay? And next time wake me.” _Even if I’d try to stop you._ You bend over again, kiss his forehead this time. He nods, a meek gesture. “We really should run you a bath,” you tell him. “Hopefully Ponta shows up by the time we’re done.”

Incidentally, Ponta _does_ show up. You’ve got a water bottle and a fresh towel tucked under your arm for him, the bathtub filling up down the hall, when you come back to the bedroom to find Ponta tucked against Natsume’s side atop the futon cover. Natsume looks to have nearly fallen asleep but his fingers are slowly scratching at the top of Ponta’s head.

“Where’ve you _been_?” It comes out blurted, more sharply than you intended.

“Hello to you too, brat.” But he doesn’t sound truly bothered by it, no moreso than he ever does, anyhow. He turns to blink at you, slowly, eyes inscrutable as ever. “I was patrolling. Didn’t Natsume tell you?”

“Patrolling takes three hours?” That doesn’t seem likely; the Fujiwaras live less than fifteen minutes from here by bus but for Ponta it’s half the time. Even if he's checking in on a broader area than just the Fujiwaras' home you'd think it would be much quicker.

“Depends who you run into.” He licks at a paw, tone belying nothing.

“Wait, was there trouble?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle. Easily.” He offers up no further information. And while it’s not great news that he’s run into anything at all that he’d had to see to personally, he’ll have to take Ponta at his word that it’s been dealt with. He’ll need to ask him about it later, though. Natsume definitely will, if he remembers enough of today to realize how long Ponta had been gone.

“Thank you,” you tell him, and mean it.

“Hmpfh. You owe me a tempura dinner for this.” He huffs, nudging at Natsume’s now-motionless fingers with his head; it seems he’s fallen asleep. “And for your insolence.”

You nod, kneeling down beside Natsume. He doesn’t seem to be too deeply asleep, his nose scrunches a little when you put your hand on his forehead. You’ll really need to take his temperature properly; he feels warmer now than before. “Why did you leave at all, though?” you ask. You think it’s a fair question. You smooth the futon cover with one hand over Natsume’s chest, fully aware that you sound ungrateful. And you’re kicking yourself for not noticing anything was off about him when you left him early this morning while he was still asleep, or you’d have stayed.

“Because the idiot _made_ me, obviously,” he sniffs.

“Ponta, I don’t believe for a second that Natsume, or anyone else, has ever once _made_ you do anything you didn’t want to do,” you shoot back. 

The noise he makes is something like an indignant _harrumph._ He looks pointedly away from you.

You raise an eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”

He doesn’t turn back towards you but flicks an ear in your direction. “If I _didn’t_ go, he’d have just made himself worse worrying over it.” The exasperation in his voice has grown softer around the edges.

Your shoulders slump at that. Ponta’s not wrong, either. Natsume shifts beneath the covers, shivers, doesn’t wake.

“At any rate,” Ponta continues, swatting  a paw lightly at Natsume’s motionless fingers. “He wasn’t alone, not really. Mugi stayed with him, though that little garden whelp was clearly useless at convincing him not to push himself. Typical that the weakling took one step out in the cold and faceplanted, I _told_ him to stay inside.” He swats at Natsume’s fingers with a bit more force, but his claws aren’t out. “But Hinoe was outside the front gate looking after the wards. Natsume might be a danger to himself being so terminally stupid, but no threat was going to get in from the outside.”  

“Ah...Hinoe?” You feel your eyebrows shoot up.

“The pervert woman who was always mooning over Reiko, _that_ one,” he says, by way of explanation.

You just stare at him.

He gives a very put-upon sigh. “Don’t lose sleep over it.” He waves a dismissive paw. “She can’t come inside without express permission, and I told her Natsume’s not feeling up to having visitors and to go home. She _might_ be able to force her way through my wards on her own, if she really, really worked at it, but it’d be unpleasant and draining for her like it was for the youkai last night. I strengthened the wards before I left.”

“Hmm.” That’s all you really have to say on the matter. You’ve never met Hinoe, and you’re not sure you’d care to.

Ponta scoffs. “She may be a gutter-brained good-for-nothing fool but she does _care_ about Natsume. She’s not going to come _steal his innocence away_ or whatever it is you’re imagining.” A thoughtful pause. “Heh. _You’re_ more likely to do that than her, I suppose.”

You choke on nothing. “ _Ponta!”_ you splutter.

And, of course, _that’s_ when Natsume wakes up, to your face on fire and Ponta’s snickering. His forehead crinkles, eyes still closed. “...Hmn…?”

“Hey,” you tell him, gently, cupping the back of his neck. “Let’s get you into the bath now, yeah?”

“‘Kay.” He hums and turns so his cheek is pressed against your wrist. “You’re warm,” he informs you, with a faint sleepy grin.

“So are you,” you mutter. It’s not a good thing.

For all the shortcomings and inconveniences of living in a house that had lain virtually vacant for the better part of forty years, the bath makes up for a great deal of them, you’d say. The ofuro is as traditionally styled as the rest of the house but it’s quite large, and deep, half sunk into the floor and made of pretty stonework. It comfortably fits both you and Natsume, and inevitably Ponta as well, with room to spare. However, your own hectic schedule and Natsume’s typically early bedtime mean you don’t bathe together with much frequency. And Natsume’s not really in any state to be enjoying the occasion this time around. Before you’d even managed to get him fully out of his clothes he’d needed his inhaler, hastily fetched from the medicine cabinet, and as many sips of water from your offered water bottle as he could manage (not many). By the time you’ve got him settled in the tub, his back flush with your chest, his head is lolling onto your shoulder, worn out from a coughing fit. You’re hoping the steam helps with that.

It’s a testament to just how poorly he’s feeling that he doesn’t protest to not being able to get himself clean before getting into the tub. And even if he had said something it probably would have been more out of consideration for you sharing the tub with him than anything else. But you don’t give a damn at the moment, and you’re dead certain that Natsume’s too weak and shaky to keep himself upright for long on the bathing stool so you don’t even try it. You lower him into the tub with his arms looped around your neck, perpetually a little paranoid that you’re going to slip or drop him by accident doing something like this one day. But he lets out a sigh the second he’s submerged, and tucks his head under your chin.

“Warm…” he hums.

You squeeze his shoulder and reach for the shower-head to wet his hair. He’s pliant and drowsy against you, and the little noises he makes when you start rubbing in the shampoo are reminiscent of a kitten, bumping your chest with the tip of his nose. You feel a swooping rush of affection in your chest as you massage slow circles into his scalp, thinking vaguely that it’s wrong to be enjoying this moment so much. But both of you have to take moments of respite where you can get them, you suppose, even sandwiched between the otherwise pretty awful situations. It’s all been one gigantic _pretty awful situation_ , really. But looking down now at soapy hair and thin scarred shoulders and pale knees bobbing above the water you feel nothing but absolute wonder.

 _I love you_ , you think. “You’re beautiful,” you tell him.

He promptly lets out something between a groan and a muffled squawk, sounding just as much like a kitten as before, albeit a soaked, sudsy, disgruntled, embarrassed kitten. You grin and let your fingers trace down from the base of his neck to leave a trail of bubbles along his arm. And if your own cheeks are a little pink, too, well, at least Ponta isn’t in here at the moment to see.

You’re not entirely sure where Ponta had gotten off to. He’d muttered something about finding the one Natsume had called Mugi, to tell him off. Presumably the small sniffly ayakashi is still in the garden, puttering around and saving your laundry from the impending rain. Which is a patently strange thought, really. But Ponta won’t be absent long, not while the bath water’s still hot.

You’re humming tunelessly, working in the shampoo, raking your fingers back and forth through soapy hair for longer than strictly necessary while he tucks himself deeper in against you. And the little sounds he’s still making aren’t giving you any incentive to stop. A dollop of a foam falls off his hair and hits his shoulder with a little _plap_ and you grin.

“You any less cold now?” you ask. He’s shivering less, at least.

“Mm...uh-huh.” His head bobs against you.

“Do you think you could eat something?”

A pause. “Um.”

Your heart sinks. “Do you think you could try? We’ve still got that bit of plain rice in the fridge I can heat up.”

“Okay.” It’s subdued. “I’m sorry,” he adds, peering up at you.

You rub at his shoulder with your thumb, smearing the suds there. “Don’t apologize,” you tell him.

“Okay,” he repeats. And, after a moment, “...am I allowed to say _thank you_?”

“Sure.” You swirl a vague squiggly pattern into the foam on his shoulder.

“Then thank you for taking care of me and being really sweet even though I did something stupid and scared the hell out of you.” The words come out in a blurted jumble and his gaze has skittered down towards the surface of the water.

“Well you did do something stupid and you did scare the hell out of me,” you confirm, with a decisive nod.

His head dips down a bit. “Sor-- I mean. Yeah…”

“Natsume Takashi.” He peeks back up at you, eyes gone a little wide at the use of his given name, and your fingers catch his chin. “I’ll always take care of you. I _want_ to take care of you. And I’m never going to think that that’s a burden.” You resist a reflex to cringe, you hadn’t meant to put it quite so plainly or for it to sound so trite but really you mean every goddamn word of  it.

He opens his mouth, closes it again. And it makes you ache inside just how genuinely caught off guard he looks by this. Like he’s trying to banish the creeping notion that any second someone’s going to pop out of a cupboard and yell _April Fool_ and that all the good things he’d found would suddenly be gone. He’s certainly made this face before, at you, and for years you’d caught glimpses of it watching him interact with the Fujiwaras.

“Okay,” he whispers. And then, as though too worn out to really contemplate it further, he sags against you completely, no longer really bearing any of his own weight at all, letting the water and your arms around him do all the work, forehead knocking into your collarbone. He nods. “Thank you.” One very shaky hand comes up to your skin, and as though he’d gotten the idea from your own sudsy doodle on his shoulder, his finger lights on the coating of shampoo foam that his hair had smeared onto your chest. You don’t know what he’s drawing, and can’t really see it, but it’s vaguely circular, just above your heart.

“What are you making?”

“Sigil,” he murmurs, adding some lines and swirls. “Hiiragi taught me. Prob’bly doing it really wrong though…” You note he’s slurring his words now, just a bit.

“Hiiragi...Natori-san’s shiki?”

“Mhm.” He adds a large swooping line through the center with his thumb.

“What’s it for?”

“Charm for bodily protection....I should ask her to show me again, though. Works really well.”

You don’t particularly want to ruminate on how exactly Natsume came to test out just how protective such a charm might be. His finger’s stopped moving now, but it’s still hovering over your heart. You grin and rest your chin on top of the currently foam-slicked crown of his head. “I wonder if it’d be more effective drawn in something other than shampoo.”

“Who knows…” A yawn. “Natori-san’s coming at the end of the month, though, right? I’ll see if Hiiragi’ll copy it down for me…”

“Natori-san’s coming?” This is news to you, though honestly Natsume has so many visitors so frequently it can be hard to keep track of. He’s rarely alone, the Fujiwaras are here at the minimum once a week but usually more; Touko-san’s coming tomorrow morning. And Dad comes whenever he can, and Taki practically lived here this past summer and any school break or weekend she can manage. Nishimura and Kitamoto are farther away than Taki’s Fukuoka school, all the way in Osaka, but they make it a point to visit as often as humanly possible during the school year. Natsume always looks so unrelentingly surprised and delighted whenever they show up on the doorstep and Nishimura yanks him into a bear hug, while you and Kitamoto share a quiet smile behind their backs. Even Shibata visits, with a frequency that surprises you, and he brings sweets and bad movies to watch and is generally much softer towards Natsume than you thought possible when you met him. And all this is to say nothing of the ayakashi visitors and friends.

“Yeah…He’ll be back from filming up in Kobe, he’s gonna come for a weekend or so…” Every other word is coming out on a yawn now; it’s getting a little hard to understand him. You’re just glad he’s relaxed. The coughing has tapered off for the moment. “I think that’s what he said. He called, ‘member?”

“No,” you say, honestly. And you feel a little bad for forgetting. You may be busy but your schedule’s got nothing on Natori’s. And he’s the only other person (that is to say, human being) on the planet who knows the full extent of all that’s happened here. You know he’d also drop literally every item on that hectic schedule and come running if he thought Natsume needed him, the fact that he’d done just that a year and a half ago is the only reason Natsume’s still breathing today.

Natori was, after all, the one who had found him.

“I think...he said he’d help if we wanna start getting rid of the kitchen wallpaper…’s really kind of him.”

“Only if you’re up to it by then,” you add.

He doesn’t argue that point, just nods. “I got two weeks ‘til then...” He rubs out the sigil with a slow swipe of his palm, swirling some aimless curlicues in its place with fingers that seem to be quickly losing dexterity. You need to get him out of the tub before he passes out on you.

“I’ll make you lots of soup,” you promise.

“‘Kay….” A very long pause, his fingers sliding down to rest motionless above your diaphragm, and you think he truly has fallen asleep. Then, “Don’t miss class again...or work.” The words are barely audible, slurred against your skin.

“We’ll see.”

He pokes your stomach. “ _Tanuma._ ” It startles a chuckle out of you, the way he draws out the syllables of your name into something between a reprimand and a longsuffering groan.

You can’t bring yourself to feel too terribly bad, though. You’ll do what you have to, and the choice there is always easy. But for the immediate future it’s a non-issue, anyways. “I don’t have to work tomorrow,” you tell him, reaching over to turn on the water. “Just the two classes, then I’ll pick up groceries for us and I’ll be back. I promised Ponta a tempura dinner.”

Natsume huffs. “Don’t ever _promise_ him anything, least of all food…”

“You do it all the time,” you point out, cupping your fingers over his eyes to keep the soap away while you begin to rinse.

“I...do,” he concedes with a grumble, “and I regret it every single time.”

You find that hard to believe, but you don’t say so. “Well I’ll make the tempura at any rate, if Touko-san will let me cook for her. If not then Ponta will probably prefer her cooking to mine anyhow.”

“Touko-san…?” He tilts his head to look up at you, your hand still half cupped around his eyes. You watch the shift in behind his eyes from hazy confusion to realization to dread. “Oh,” he says, simply. “That was tomorrow?”

You nod. You’d honestly only remembered at all because Touko-san had sent an email this morning, which Natsume apparently hadn’t seen, asking if she could pick anything up from the grocery store for you and bring it along tomorrow. “What’s the matter?”

He gestures vaguely at himself, looking helpless. “‘M sick. She’ll worry.”

You frown. He’s spent the better part of the past year being ill or unwell in some capacity, with the Fujiwaras there to help care for him a good portion of that time, and this instance isn’t particularly different. He seems uncommonly bothered by it. “Well...yeah, but—”

“We were gonna go to pick out winter bulbs for the garden…” His tone suggests he’s done something horrific and unforgivable, and to your dismay his eyes fill with tears.

“Hey, now…” You swipe at his cheek with the pad of your thumb. This isn’t...well, you hesitate to use the word _normal_ , but it’s not quite the tipping point you’d have anticipated. And you’re not quite sure what to say to make it better. “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow anyways…”

Natsume doesn’t say anything, just nods, a quick bob of the head. His eyes are wet, lips pursed like he’s holding back a sob.

“Touko-san will like just getting the chance to see you, won’t she?” You’re still racking your brain for the right thing to say. “You can have a day in together.”

“...yeah.” You barely hear the word but it still doesn’t at all sound like he believes you. He swallows hard, squeezing his eyes shut against more impending tears. After a long, shuddering breath he peeks up at you again through wet lashes. “‘M sorry...I’m being stupid…”

“No.” You swipe at another tear, letting your finger trace along the perpetually dark bruiselike shadow under his eye. “No, you’re not. You had a crappy day.” And when you reframe it like that in your mind, it makes a lot more sense. He was already sick and exhausted and overwhelmed, and guilty for worrying you. Add to that the prospect of worrying Touko too, and saddling her with caring for him. He can’t just tell her not to come; if Natsume’s insisting that you go to class tomorrow then he needs someone (of the non-ayakashi variety) to be here with him until you return, and she’d come regardless no matter what he told her.

But the sicker he gets, you both know, the weaker his already tenuous grip on reality becomes. That’s been proven time and time again by now.

“Hey, if you’re feeling better tomorrow you can watch me make the tempura. Maybe you should take notes,” you tease lightly, trying to pull him out of his head.

Another sniffle, followed by a wavering breathy little sound that could be a laugh. “My cooking’s not _that_ bad.”

“I’ll remember that the next time you burn the rice.”

“You’re mean.”

“Sorry.” You’re not sorry, not in the least.

He’s not wrong about his cooking, it’s not awful, and your own meanwhile isn’t anything to write home about. In Natsume’s case it’s a lack of experience, mostly; the only person who’s ever cared enough to teach him anything was Touko. And it was mostly the basics he learned when he volunteered to help her in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, cooking rice, browning beef, scaling a fish without slicing his finger. But more often than not she’d shoo him away and insist on doing the bulk of the difficult work on her own. Out of love, a desire to spoil him, and you’re glad for that. But he’s still determined to learn, to close the experiential gap, and you try to help when you can.

“I’m gonna make dinner this week,” he says, decisively, something like childlike determination flitting through eyes that seconds ago were wide and desolate. “Yakisoba. With chicken.”

You smile. “Okay.” Yakisoba is one of a handful of dishes that he can make, and make well, on his own. “Then let’s go to the store this week once you’re feeling better.”

He nods, almost brightly. He hasn’t forgotten the distress over Touko but something else to look forward to, a concrete way for him to not feel useless, is a plenty welcome distraction. You just hope that it’s not wishful thinking that he’ll be up and about and well enough to be in the kitchen, let alone at the store, within a week.

“We’ll want to go to the store by the station, they’ve got way better meat and vegetables than the place near us. We maybe have enough soba, I have to check—”

You comb through his hair with your fingers again as you resume rinsing, listening to him talk and marveling at just how stubbornly Natsume’s hair seems to hold onto the soap. Finer strands, a generally silkier, fluffier texture than your own, so beautiful but kind of a pain in the bath. You’re thinking about how best you should go about helping him dry it, because you’re not about to let him go to sleep with a wet head, but he’s too spent to really hold his own head up. You’ve dealt with this problem before, but you’ve yet to devise a good system that doesn’t take forever or do a terrible job of things  and leave him with a damp head anyways.

You’re jolted from your thoughts when Natsume’s words cut off, suddenly, mid-sentence, like some invisible creature has plucked the sound right out of the air.

“Natsume?”

He’s gone still, very very still, and his eyes are fixed on the surface of the water.

Your fingers go just as still, knotted up in his hair. Anxiety thrums in your chest. “Natsume…”

When he finally, finally looks up at you, jaw working soundlessly, something in his eyes is _off._

But _off_ in an all too familiar way.

“Get out of the water.” You barely hear the words at first. Within seconds all the blood has drained from his face. His breath hitches, then rattles like it’s stuck in his throat. He pushes against your chest with the heel of his hand. There’s not much force to the gesture, but plenty of urgency.

“Natsume…?”

“Get _out—_ ” he starts, breath catching on a harsh cough, then another. “—out of the water,” he wheezes, finally. He’s pushing you in earnest now, with both hands, some awful primal fear in his face, from a place you can’t quite reach far enough to draw him out of.

You don’t stop him from pushing you but you take him by bony trembling shoulders. You want to get him out if he’s frightened, get him out _now_ if there’s the remotest chance of danger, but you can’t lift safely lift him out of the tub if he’s squirming and shoving at you. Any attempt to steady him, ground him, usually feels like fine sand slipping between your fingers, and now is no exception. “What do you see?” you ask, following his gaze with trepidation where it’s fallen back down to the water. The problem is, if it’s just you and him, there’s nobody to confirm if whatever Natsume’s seeing is true or false, except Natsume himself. And if it really is something dangerous...you really wish you were less useless in this regard. “What’s in the water?”

“It—it’s—” his words are halting, and he gulps hard. “It’s. Not water.”

You blink. “What?” You dip your fingertip into the surface, and Natsume flinches.

“Just. Please. Get out.” His voice has gone high and small and scared. He shoves at your chest again.

“Ah—okay, okay—” You have to push down on his shoulders a bit to keep him still. He’s still got soapy hair, but if it truly is something dangerous you guess that doesn’t matter much. You just wish you _knew._ “Is there...is something here?”

His head whips around, taking the bathroom in, and spraying your face with flecks of soap. “I—I d-don’t see b-but there’s—I can _hear…_ ” His breath hitches, stammering only growing worse with every word, and you think he might be on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Hear what?”

“Laughing. Someone’s—someone’s laughing.” His voice has been all but doused entirely by sheer terror.

“Where?” Ice drops into your gut, ears pricked for any sound. And you’re already reaching to pull the plug on the drain and preparing to haul him out of the water, every instinct screaming at you to sweep him right away from here and everything that could ever hurt or frighten him again. But you’re not sure where exactly you should take him that’ll be safe if the threat is real and closeby.

“It’s—I—everywhere, I don’t _know._ ” The last word catches on a sob. His eyes are bright, and blown so wide. “There’s—”

A third voice cuts him off. “There’s nothing here, Natsume.”

“Ponta!” Your own voice is sharp with desperation. “Where—"

Ponta ignores you, hopping up onto the edge of the tub by your knees and dipping a paw into the water. “This is water,” he announces, decisively. “Doesn’t it feel like water?”

Natsume freezes, gaze dropping back down. “N-no? ...Yes? I don’t—I can’t tell _,_ ” he concludes, miserably. “It’s...it’s loud in here.”

Ponta leans forward, nudges Natsume’s knee with his nose. “There’s nothing here. Nothing got past the wards.”

Natsume says nothing. He’s frozen, unsure, eyes flitting from Ponta to the water and back again. Then, very quietly, “It...it looks…"

“I know how it looks,” Ponta says, briskly but not unkindly. He nudges Natsume’s knee again. “It’s just water. And you’ve got soap in your hair. Let Tanuma fix it so he can make us dinner.”

Natsume takes one last long look at the water, before turning back into your chest, shivering, his nose cold on your skin. His hands come up to the sides of his head, clamp down over his ears.

Something in your chest fractures like spiderweb cracks across thin ice. You wind one arm around his shoulders and grab for the showerhead again. Ponta watches you. Natsume sniffles, mutters something unintelligible, coughs, sobs. Coughs again. A harsh, barking cough that jolts his thin body, leaves him wheezing and shuddering.

You barely notice that you yourself are muttering, a low meaningless stream that’s meant to soothe but probably falling on deaf ears, nearly drowned out by coughing and gasping and strangled sobs. But you don’t stop. Your fingers work methodically through his hair, the water level in the tub now dipping below your hip. You shiver. You need to hurry up here or he’ll get cold.

You force your brain through its haze of anxiety to focus, try to compile a list of what he needs, what you can _do_ . It comes to you more or less in disjointed words buzzing through your mind; _dry hair, thermometer, fever medicine, humidifier. Food. Space heater. Sleep. Call Touko-san._

By the time the last bits of water are swirling around your toes, your mumbling has shifted from hackneyed words of comfort to disjointed bits of sutras. You don’t even remember which ones exactly you’re reciting from, and it certainly can’t be doing any good if you don’t have half the words right. But the source material is good, verses of peace and calm and healing that you’d asked your dad to teach you. Whether it objectively helps or not, it does make you feel better to say them, and it helps Natsume fall asleep sometimes. He’ll listen to you practice, when he’s coherent enough. He says he likes the sounds of the words, likes the way you say them whether they’re correct or not.

Ponta, who has stayed quiet up to now, seems to have had enough. He swats at your arm. “Oi, what nonsense are you muttering about? Are you planning on cozying up with him in an empty bathtub all night?”

That prompts you to look down. The water is well and truly gone now, only patches and streaks of bubbles remaining across the tile. It’s not going to be long until the water from the showerhead runs lukewarm. As if anticipating it, you feel Natsume shiver.

“Idiot. Hurry it up, I’m hungry.” But even as he says this his eyes are trained on Natsume’s back, scarred and shuddering.

You nod, slowly, raking your fingers through his hair one last time before shutting the water off. “Do you...know what he’s seeing?” This isn’t something you’ve ever really asked outright.

His eyes flick towards yours. “Does it matter?”

You shift your grip on Natsume, preparing to lift him out of the tub. “You tell me.” You’ve suspected that Ponta can peer into Natsume’s hallucinations at times like he can with his dreams.

_I know how it looks._

Several beats of silence. Then, “He told you himself, didn’t he?”

Your brows shoot up. “You were eavesdropping.”

“You two were in here being disgusting lovebirds, you should be thanking me for not interrupting! I missed out on a decent bath. _Any_ ways,” he huffs. “It’s nothing too far beyond the usual,” he says, ever-inscrutable gaze falling back onto Natsume. “The water was a nasty new touch, though.”

Unconsciously you draw Natsume closer against your chest, eyeing the tub drain by your toes. “What...was in the water?”

“Nothing was.” He pauses and tilts his head, as though listening for something. “Doesn’t much matter now. He’s stuck down too deep in his own head to know what’s going on around him. Anyhow,” he stands up, stretches, and hops onto the floor. “May as well get moving. I for one am _hungry,_ remember. You know the drill.”

The drill, being keep him safe, keep him comfortable, and _wait_ , wait until he comes back to you. It’s maddening, but from the outside of whatever twisted visions have their hold on him, when he’s this far gone, your hands are tied. At this point it’s not you he’s seeing anymore.

Ponta takes a few waddling steps towards the door, glances back. “Come on then. Dinner won’t fix itself.”

 

***

 

Dinner turns out to just be some hamburg steaks tossed in the microwave, and Ponta grumbles about it but licks his plate clean nonetheless. Natsume’s leftover rice is steadily growing cold in its dish by your elbow, untouched, which is disappointing but not unexpected. You think you’ll take it and make some okayu with it for him before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning. Honey ginger, maybe, if you’ve got it. 

You’ve got your homework spread out on the kotatsu, Ponta curled up and dozing beneath it beside your leg, head poking out of the blanket. The futon is laid out behind you, close enough for you to reach back and lay your hand over Natsume’s cold fingers every now and then. He’s curled up on his side, coughing and shivering and muttering and sweating, drifting in and out of consciousness and by the looks of it still wholly unaware of your presence.

And you hate it, you really do, but all you can really do right now is sit here and do your homework.

Objectively it’s not so bad. Today it’s math, which you’re not awful at, and oddly enough at the moment you’ve got a degree of clarity and focus. Maybe because it’s something to _do,_ something concrete with a clear set of rules. You can’t fix Natsume, but you can do a statistics problem.

You called Touko, while you were fixing dinner, reported the 39-degree fever to her. The worry and sheer kindness in her voice made your chest hurt; it always does. She’ll be here first thing in the morning, no doubt with an armful of drug store shopping bags and a motherly crinkle in her brow. She’ll make sure Natsume doesn’t leave the futon, and she’ll tidy up the house and give him umeboshi tea and daikon honey and generally dote on him every bit as much as he deserves to be doted on. And if (when) his mind goes somewhere else, she’ll sit with him and hold his hand and wait. By now, it’s an established routine when he’s ill. You wish it didn’t have to be. And that it didn’t make you question, every single time, whether you hadn’t made astronomically bad and selfish decision by having Natsume here with you instead of with Touko and Shigeru. Or with Natori, who’d know a hell of a lot better than you, really, how to keep him safe. That being here was Natsume’s decision too, and what he’d said in no uncertain terms was what he wanted, notwithstanding.

You scribble down a solution, and Ponta yawns by your knee. It prompts you to yawn in turn. Which is ridiculous, it’s just barely past 8 in the evening. But even if you’re not so bad at statistics problems, exhaustion is claiming you anyways. You blink, scrub at your eyes with the heel of your hand. You can finish it up on the train tomorrow if you need—it’s an hour’s ride to school—but you don’t particularly want to. You drop your pencil and stretch your arms up over your head, to get the blood flowing or something like that, then drop them heavily, scooping up your pencil and reaching back absently with your free hand to brush your fingers across Natsume’s knuckles.

….which jerk violently away at your touch. You hear a rattling gasp and you whip around fast enough to make yourself dizzy. He’s not quite looking at you, jaw working and eyes still too glassy, but he’s not quite _not_ looking at you.

“Natsume.” You move closer with deliberate slowness, staying in his line of sight. You’d long since learned, after being on the receiving end of a spectacular black eye once, that even if he looks like he’s coming back to himself that it’s still not necessarily you that he thinks he’s looking at.

But it seems you’re lucky because he scrunches his nose up in a manner that is quite frankly adorable and squints at you like someone’s flashed a light in his eyes. “Hm…?” It trails off into a thick sniffle; his nose is running. You turn around, casting about for where you’d left the box of tissues, finally spotting it on the dresser. He doesn’t appear to have the strength to even blow his nose effectively but you hold the tissue for him anyways. Your final bit of confirmation that he’s come back to himself is that he looks equal parts grateful and embarrassed that you’re wiping his nose. You just smile, warmth and relief and affection coursing through your chest, and you lean in to press your lips to his hair, soft and sweet-smelling and very nearly dry.

Homework forgotten, you lower yourself down to his eye level, sprawled out on your stomach, and let your fingers trail very lightly over one cheekbone. A question, an offer; a quick peck to the top of his head is one thing but he may not want to be touched so much right now. But his eyes search yours for a moment, before softening into something open and so wholly trusting that you’re scared you’ll never really deserve it, and he turns his cheek into your palm.

In your hand you feel overheated skin and scar tissue. His cheeks are blotchy red and his eyes look bruised and sunken, and you marvel a bit at how quickly his condition has deteriorated in a single evening. But he’s calm, now, and hopefully while that lasts you can help him fall asleep.

“I heated up that rice,” you tell him, gesturing vaguely behind you. “...but it’s probably cold again. I can make you something else if you want...” His slight wince is answer enough to that. Which you anticipated, but you feel a twinge of worry anyways. “You need to eat something in the morning then, okay?”

“Okay…” his voice is docile.

“I’ll make okayu, I’ll leave it in the fridge before I leave. Touko-san’ll probably make you something better, though.”

“‘kay—” he cuts himself off with an abrupt, harsh cough, then another. The force of it jerks him forward, and he slaps a shaking hand over his mouth, presumably to keep from coughing on your own hand, still cupping his cheek. You frown; the sound of them is a little deeper and a little wetter than they should be for just having been brought on by allergens and stress. And you have the sinking suspicion that the nasty virus he’d just been getting over might truly have come calling once more, if it had really fully left at all.

You scoot yourself around so that you’re lying on your side beside the futon facing him, one hand still cradling his cheek and the other finding his chest, rubbing your thumb in those steady, probably useless little circles up and down his breastbone. Incrementally, his breathing slows, deepens.

“‘M sorry,” he croaks.

You shake your head. “Just breathe, alright?” You sweep your thumb for what might as well be the hundredth time along that dip below his eye, purple and sickly.

He manages a nod. His eyelids start to droop, you think, but then quite suddenly they’re wide open again, trained on something just over your shoulder. You turn your head to look. Nothing. When you turn back he’s still looking, his expression not overly fearful, but very uncertain. He meets your eye.

“I—ah...there’s—”

“There’s nothing,” Ponta announces, for the second time this evening, appearing beside your elbow. You start; you could’ve sworn he was asleep, and in his portly cat form he’s usually not one for stealth.

“Nothing’s here,” Ponta continues, scuttling fully into Natsume’s line of vision. “Just us.”

“Oh,” Natsume says, giving one last look past you before his eyes finally do slip shut, apparently taking Ponta at his word. “I’m glad.” He reaches out in Ponta’s general direction and somehow manages to find the top of his head. He scritches lightly behind Ponta’s ears and Ponta lets out a self-satisfied hum.

“And if anyone _does_ show up, I’ll eat them.”

Natsume cracks an eye open. “ _Sensei,_ ” he grumbles, leveling a glare with no real heat behind it.

“I can’t help it if I’m still hungry,” Ponta says, giving you a pointed look.

“There’s more in the freezer, help yourself,” you tell him, raising an eyebrow.

Ponta scoffs. “Idiot. You know I can’t reach the freezer. Or the microwave.”

You smirk. “Then go catch something. There’s the door.”

“ _Insolence_. I don’t have to take this from you, you know. I could eat you. Oy, Natsume,” he pokes Natsume’s shoulder with an insistent paw. “Tell Tanuma I could eat him right now."

“Don’t eat Tanuma.” His voice is a little stronger than it was before, still faint and thready but very much _present,_ so different than the frenzied murmuring of just a few minutes ago. "I like him—" a sudden cough, and a harsh wheeze, but he keeps talking. “A-anyways you’ll regret it once you don’t get to eat his tempura.”

“Touko’s is better.”

“Fine then, you’re not getting any,” you inform him, dryly.

“ _W_ _hat?_ ”

“You heard me.”

Ponta rails at you for a few more minutes after that, and you engage him, if only to give Natsume something to listen to. Natsume drops out of the conversation pretty quickly, eyelids drooping, consciousness flagging. His hand slides off the top of Ponta’s head to land softly beside his face. A moment later you hear a light snore.

Ponta hops up then, your argument apparently abandoned, waddles over to settle himself in the hollow between Natsume’s chest and his slightly drawn-up knees. He regards you for a moment. “You ought to sleep too, shouldn’t you? You’re looking peaky lately.”

“Oh?” You raise an eyebrow, failing to keep the smile out of your voice. “It almost sounds like you care.”

He huffs. “I just don’t want to listen to Natsume make a big ordeal out of it.” He licks a paw. “And you’re a brat but you’re the brat that makes the food.”

“Right.” You tilt your head, watch him for a second longer as he tucks himself deeper against Natsume’s stomach, resumes licking his paw. You watch Natsume, too, watch his chest rise with breaths too shallow and too wheezy. He only sleeps on his side when he’s feeling very poorly, you know, and you’re not sure if it’s because it’s some kind of self defense gesture, or if it’s easier to breathe that way than on his back, or a bit of both. But his face is slack against your palm and more peaceful than you could’ve hoped for even fifteen minutes ago. Your thumb catches the very edge of the scar on his forehead, ridged pink flesh half-obscured by wisps of damp hair.

You cast a glance behind you, at the sprawl of books and papers on the kotatsu. “I should finish up,” you say, but your voice lacks much conviction.

But your decision is made for you when Natsume shivers.

In the span of about ninety seconds you deposit the rice in the fridge, hit the lights, switch off the kotatsu, make sure that your phone is plugged in and alarm is set. You don’t bother to put away your books before you crawl into the futon behind Natsume, his back tucked into your chest. Ponta hasn’t budged from his spot, so Natsume is now sandwiched between the two of you. His body’s far too warm against yours, and the shivering won’t subside. But his sleep seems otherwise untroubled, at least. Thank god. You run your thumb up and down the length of his arm beneath the futon cover, stare at shadows thrown onto the wall by orange streetlights. The rain is pattering away noisily outside, and you wonder vaguely about little garden spirits and whether or not you’ll have a big pile of sodden laundry to pick up out of the mud tomorrow. At some point you’d started muttering bits of sutra again, the soft rhythm of it pulled from your lips without your realizing it.

“Hmpfh.” Ponta cuts you off mid-syllable. “You’re a sentimental fool, you know that. Natsume’s rubbed off on you.”

And you can’t contest that, really. You hum, and let your eyes fall shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Next time, Natori's take on things, and some much-needed backtracking and explanation.


End file.
